SOLSC, March 25, 2017

This time of year we always play the game of ‘where were we for spring break?’ Sometimes we most clearly remember our spring break trips based on where we watched basketball games. NCAA basketball runs deep through our spring break travels each year. At times, the devastation of KU or Villanova losing overtook the awesome and wonderful trips we have taken. Sad, isn’t it?

This year, we are with friends in Breckenridge. We don’t have a very big TV here so we went out for dinner at a pizza place with too many TVs. It was sad to watch KU lose on all 9 that we could see from our table. But we got to reminiscing about past spring breaks and watching games.

Last year, we met Villanova alums cheering in a hotel lobby in Cancun and watched the Oregon game with my cousin’s kids in a great Mexican restaurant off the beach in Tulum. We sat in a dark air conditioned sports bar/room at a resort in Mexico on a Saturday night watching Nova beat KU after spending most of the two hours debating who we were really cheering for as both were equally loved in our family. It really didn’t matter who won, but that didn’t keep us from watching every minute of the game.

The year before, both of our teams were out early. We were traveling the East coast visiting colleges with our son. It seemed like each school we visited lost right after we passed through; Villanova, then Virginia. Unfortunately, our bad luck did not rub off on Duke.

The year before that, we were road tripping through Canada and skiing off the grid for part of the time. We would desperately try to find reception each time we returned to the rental car. We were driving through the Rockies when KU lost to Stanford. Stanford? Really? I can still hear my son in the backseat shaming the Jayhawks for that loss.

And the year before that? We were in Hawaii visiting my mother. We were at a super fancy hotel for only one night and we found ourselves in the lounge watching KU play. And before that, Michigan and Trey Burke beat Kansas in a hotel in Mexico. And before that, Kansas rolled through to the finals while we were in rolling through Utah.

It seems as though many of our most significant memories involve watching NCAA basketball, particularly KU. We carve time out of our family vacations to find places to watch them play. We spend hours analyzing them and bracketing them to the final four. And the funny thing is that none of us ever went to KU.